Renascence
by Extant
Summary: Picks up where the movie left off. The clan's spiritual leader is always mated with the chief. With Tsu'tey killed in battle and Neytiri to inherit her mother's place, the mantle should fall on Jake. But instinct tells him something's wrong...


**Disclaimer: Don't own. If I did, all those movie critics who invented racial slurs for the Na'Vi would be sued. Seriously, people, are we ever going to grow out of this? Shows exactly why a movie like this is necessary… 'Nuff said.**

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It came over him like sunlight – warm, steady, embracing, a tranquil and vibrant joy. There was no stomach-dropping sensation of being pulled from his body like with the avatar machines, no terrifying coldness of death closing over him as Jake had feared. Only a slow dissolving of his breath, his heartbeat, the sound of the chanting Na'Vi, melting into that warmth like snow in water. From within the light voices arose, beckoning him, pulling him gently from the confines of himself into their boundlessness, and though he could barely speak their language, he knew everything they said…

They touched him, tenderly, ebbing and flowing around him, and Jake felt himself to be an old man and himself, a young girl and himself, a father and himself, more, endless. And beneath, around, inside was that powerful love and a knowing in which death was only life mistaken. In the love, the knowing, he began to feel purpose, to sense a spirit more magnificent than even the endlessness that absorbed him, and a deep, tremulous awe washed over him…

_Eywa._

_Grace, you were right… She's real._

A feeling of Her reciprocal recognition passed through him, jolting him back to himself and singling him out from the souls around him. A sudden pressure bore down on him, the weight of Her focus, of all the eyes of the Ancestors turned upon him, of their spirits and Hers coalescing into a single thrumming pulse, and he quickened with desperation, all that he had come here for, and that she might deny him, rushing back at him.

The forest… the People… the tree under which they had laid him… Neytiri…

_Send me back…_ _Let me go back…_

The pressure was almost unbearable, and for a moment he thought the throbbing hum of souls would kill him, that She had rejected him and would not only refuse him life, but obliterate him from within Herself as well. But then She spoke, not with a voice of Her own but with the voice of all the Ancestors at once, thunderous words that threatened to shatter him.

_YOU ARE NOT DONE. YOU COME FROM MY WOMB NOW. OF ME, BE BORN!_

The flux of souls convulsed violently, expelling him. He fell through the light, pulled by the pulsing waves through an ever narrower channel of warmth until, just as he thought the tunnel would dwindle to nothing, the warmth began to slowly draw away, the voices evaporate, the strong pulse fade into…

Breath…

Heartbeat…

The wind through leaves and an expectant silence…

Jake's eyes shot open. Neytiri's anxious face hovered above his, just as it had before he closed his eyes, and for a moment he panicked, thinking Eywa had sent him back to his human body. In dread, he lifted his hands before his eyes –

And gasped in dizzying relief, letting out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

They were blue.

Between his hands, Neytiri smiled quiveringly and laughed, a sound that was almost a sob. Jake bolted upright and threw his arms around her, nearly throwing both of them to the ground, clinging to her and gulping air like a man almost drowned. A deafening roar of joy went up from the Na'Vi, and Jake buried his face against Neytiri's neck. He breathed in her sweet, woody scent, letting himself feel her fingers in his hair, on his skin, her body against his…

But it wasn't enough to erase the cold unease in the pit of his stomach.

_You are not done._

Neytiri's hand caressed his spine soothingly, her voice soft and worried. "Jake?"

But he couldn't bring himself to look at her yet.

It could have just been an exhortation to live. It _should_ have been.

Something told him it wasn't.

_Why?_

He didn't have time to figure this out now. The clamor of voices pressed upon him, and he took a shuddering breath and tried to push the feeling away. He wasn't going to jump on something he couldn't explain, that could just be lingering instincts riled by near-death. A warm hand came down on his shoulder, and reluctantly he looked up to find Mo'at smiling down at him compassionately.

"Welcome home, Jakesully."

He glanced back at Neytiri, who met his gaze with a reassuring smile, and a crooked grin spread across his face despite his strange dread.

_Home_.

This was really home now.

He was Na'Vi.

Mo'at held her hand out for him, and Jake let the two women help him up onto legs still shaky with adrenaline. "No offense to Eywa," he muttered, "but I don't _ever_ want to do that again." Neytiri laughed, relieved to hear him himself. Her mother only smiled wryly.

"You will never have to."

Jake looked up. A sea of faces stretched out before him – those of his own clan and those of a few who had not yet left. In the night, their luminescent spots shimmered like stars on water, and a radiant joy soared within him.

These were _his_ people.

"Cry three times, Jakesully, to let them know you are whole."

The call rose from rose from his belly and filled his chest. Taking his hand from Mo'at's, he held Neytiri to his side and threw his fist into the air, letting out a great, whooping cry that echoed off the canyon walls.

He cried with his body.

He cried with his heart.

He cried with his soul.

And three times they answered him.

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**A/N: Continue? Yes? No? I have an idea for continuing it, but I'm not sure I like the style I used in this chapter. You tell me.**


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